The Eagles: Their Biggest Hits (1971-1975) Album Overview

This helps clarify the efficiency of Their Biggest Hits, too. Heard starting to finish, the primary 4 Eagles albums are suffer-fests, capturing the band as they study not solely to jot down but additionally to inform unhealthy from good. They launched 4 albums, or 40 songs, of their first three years, and the good majority of them merely fill area. “Most of Us Are Unhappy,” “Early Chicken,” “My Man,” “After the Thrill Is Gone”: Henley and Frey beloved to speak about their high quality management, how arduous they labored to seek out le mot juste, however I’ve by no means heard these information as way more than real-time chronicles of success and failure, the sound of a band nonetheless determining how one can not suck.

Henley hated the thought of a best hits assortment, as a result of he claimed it was “the pressured and hideous marriage of artwork and commerce,” ostensibly again when he claimed to care about that first half. He failed to know, although, that Their Biggest Hits stripped away the misfires of the Eagles’ precise albums, leaving solely 10 of the most effective songs they might ever write, which have ever been written within the realm of folk-rock. Their Biggest Hits is the one no-skips set within the catalog of a band that generally appeared to specialize within the skips. Put one other method, I’ll all the time personal a replica of Their Biggest Hits; I’d not take copies of the primary 4 Eagles albums from a free bin, Desperado debatably excepted.

In March 2026, writing concerning the golden anniversary of Their Biggest Hits, the BBC requested British music journalist Peter Doggett why these 10 songs bought so effectively. He mentioned, “It’s very melodic, very skilled and doesn’t truly imply something.” It is a well-earned insult for a band who as soon as insisted that “On the Border”—a track about being aggravated at a site visitors cop—was some profound political assertion.

Nonetheless, these should not songs about nothing. 9 of the ten tracks on Their Biggest Hits—with the lone exception of “Witchy Lady,” Henley’s bout of strong-woman paranoia—are about wanting one thing you would not have and the anguish you may endure to get it. “Take It Straightforward” is commonly taken at face worth. Frey, although, is a nervous man right here, singing for his salvation, looking for that one lover who will repair him. Hear for Leadon’s easy however good banjo line, which begins as he takes his guitar solo and doesn’t disappear till the monitor is completed; it’s the sound of hysteria and self-doubt, of making an attempt to loosen your load, not of straightforward contentment. The title and refrain of “Peaceable Straightforward Feeling” are, likewise, feints; this lust positive feels good, however Frey understands that it’s going to seemingly finish in one other rejection. That’s OK, as a result of he’s already too low to be let down once more.

Then there are the affair-and-breakup songs, tunes the place somebody is trying to find one thing higher, like younger musicians heading west to get well-known. “Lyin’ Eyes” sounds dreamy however reads cruelly, chronicling a stored lady who prowls every evening to the “dishonest aspect of city” solely to return again residence and deplore the particular person she reckons she should have all the time been. Nobody on this love triangle is completely satisfied or glad. The identical goes for “Tequila Dawn,” a brutal track about betrayal and making an attempt to fill your personal everlasting emotional void irrespective of who you damage within the course of. “Dealin’ mates,” as Frey sings, could really feel terrible, however does it actually matter when the upshot feels higher?